Helga's Diner
by Fairady
Summary: "So that'll be a Hell Burger with raw potato sticks and a flat soda. Would you like to add a slimy salad or water soup to your order for only a dollar more?"


Disclaimer: I own not and make no money off of this.

Warnings: None.

Notes: I'll never not love office shenanigans.

Helga's Diner  
by Fairady

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Duo warily peeled the shriveled bun of his burger up and found himself peering into the depths of Hell. He wasn't even surprised anymore, because if there were any place on Earth where a portal to Hell could be served up between two buns and slapped onto a cracked plate it would be in Helga's Diner.

"Well," Quatre tentatively piped up from next to him, eagerly abandoning his sorry mess of a browning salad, "it doesn't look as bad as the BLT you ordered last time."

Wufei snorted, finally deigning to look up from his cup of coffee. Blacker and more acidic than his own soul and served in a yellow mug that might have been white once upon a time. His nose wrinkled as he tilted his head sideways to see what was smashed between the buns, "I've seen spaced corpses that looked better than that BLT."

"Ergh," Duo let the bread go and gently pushed the plate away from him. It wasn't the unholy horror that the BLT was -good god, the thing had been _looking_ at him- but it still wasn't anywhere on his incredibly long list of things that were edible. "Yeah, I'm passing on this one too. Anyone else want to give it a shot?"

"No," Quatre recoiled, shuddering a bit as he poked a slimy bit of lettuce on his plate. Why he kept ordering the same thing was beyond Duo. He swore the waiters were just giving him the exact same plate of lettuce for three weeks now, because the things kept getting progressively more decayed each time they came.

Wufei leaned back and returned to his coffee without another word. The man had smartened up after their first couple times of ordering food from the diner and hadn't gotten anything that wasn't supposed to be a liquid since last month. Not that the coffee was exactly safe either. Duo swore he could use a pot of the stuff to melt Gundanium down into a liquid.

Heero glared when Duo tried to edge the plate closer to him. He ate mechanically, with no joy at all. His plate of limp and greasy fries covered in watered down ketchup slowly disappearing. Duo's heart went out to the guy's stomach, because he'd tried that last week figuring there wasn't much that could be done to mess up french fries. He'd stupidly believed it up until the first bite when he was inevitably betrayed by an undercooked bit of potato shaped like a french fry.

"Trowa?" Duo offered the burger to the tall man who had sat placidly throughout lunch after downing a cup of what was supposed to be chicken noodle soup, but, to Duo, had looked an awful lot like a cup of tepid water with a few noodles floating in it.

Trowa hooked one finger on the rim of the plate and pulled it closer. Eyes studying the food with detached curiosity. He even lifted the bun to look into the portal to Hell for himself.

"I'll give you five if you take a bite," Duo prompted after Trowa spent several seconds considering the horror before him.

"Five what?" Quatre asked. Placing a paper napkin over his plate, once again defeated by the salad.

"Paper clips," Wufei answered for Duo. His attention focused on Trowa as the man's face took on a definitely interested cast. "Une won't let him have any, she confiscates them from him when she can."

"What, why?" Quatre looked utterly baffled, and Duo shared a surprised look with Wufei.

"Ah, that's right," Wufei said after several seconds of expectant silence. "You were in space last January. You weren't here for the trebuchet incident."

"Trebuchet," Quatre repeated in a flat tone of voice. His eyes closed as he rubbed the side of his head wearily. "I don't even want to know what you guys did with it. I really don't."

"Eight," Trowa butted into the conversation, putting the bun back down and picking up the burger. It listed alarmingly to one side in a way no burger really should. "Eight paperclips and I won't smother it in ketchup."

"Deal!" Duo cackled, losing all interest in Quatre's ignorance of what boredom could incite them all into.

Trowa brushed his bangs out of his face and stared down at the burger in his hands. He rotated it all the way around. Examining it from each angle. Even Heero stopped eating to watch in morbid fascination as Trowa stopped and took a large bite. Brownish ooze squeezed out of the burger, running down Trowa's fingers and dripping onto the plate. Duo swore he could hear the screams of the damned with each exaggerated chew Trowa took.

"That's disgusting," Wufei remarked, eyes fastened on the plate where the brown stuff landed. It looked like partially solidified grease and wiggled like Jello when he tapped the plate.

Trowa shrugged, dropping the burger back onto the plate. He casually grabbed a handful of napkins and removed some more brown stuff from his face as Duo gagged. "It doesn't taste that bad."

"We'd be more inclined to believe you if we didn't know you have no tastebuds to speak of," Quatre sighed, pointedly not looking at the plate. He pushed the sleeve of his uniform up and made a show of checking his watch. "Well, so much for my lunch hour."

"So," Duo fished out a couple of bills to throw down on the table for his part of the bill, "I'm going with Kindra."

"Hm," Quatre gathered up the bills, arranging them into a neat pile with his own money. "That does have some merit. She spends more time waiting on us than anyone else on the floor, and her shirt does loose a few more buttons each time."

"Tits to the face, man," Duo slapped Quatre on the back, "you can't get more obvious flirting from a waitress than that. What do you think, Wufei?"

Wufei was already shaking his head, lining his few bills up neatly with the pile. He nodded his head towards the other end of the diner where a slim, red-head was studiously working on a pile of papers. "Kindra isn't always here, but Ms. Eyert is. Everytime we come in."

Duo snorted, "Oh, come on! I don't think that woman _ever_ leaves. Back me up here, Heero. It's Kindra, right?"

Heero scowled at his plate, only half-empty, like it'd personally beaten him in a challenge as he pushed it away. Tossing his own money down -nowhere near the neat pile they had going- he stood up and adjusted his jacket, "It's the cook."

"What!?" Duo burst out into laughter. "No way, man!"

"If it isn't," Heero said as he began to maneuver his way out of the tangle of chairs around the table, "then that cook has a lonely life ahead of them, because only someone without a sense of taste could love them."

Duo _bayed_, slapping the table as he doubled over. Wufei nearly snorted a mouthful of coffee as he tried not to laugh. Even Quatre snickered a bit at Heero's retreating back, though he looked properly guilty for it.

"Trowa," Duo gasped, reigning in his laughter, he rolled his head to peer up at the man pleadingly, "Trowa, you've got to put us out of our misery here. Tell us who it is. For the sake of our stomachs, tell us who it is that you like seeing here. Please?"

Trowa calmly gathered the money together and stood up. Slipping his jacket back on as he looked serenely at the suddenly attentive group, "That's really none of your business, Duo. I'll see you back at the office. _With_ my paperclips."

Trowa walked up to the register, ignoring the disappointed grumbling behind him as his friends resigned themselves to at least one more lunch spent at Helga's Diner.

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End file.
